Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens by Malcolm Day Read Free Book Online Page B

that this celestial event was in fact a periodic manifestation of Halley’s Comet, the English people feared the worst. And indeed, despite Harold’s heroic efforts to repel invasions on two fronts – first from the Scandinavian Hardrada in York, and then from William of Normandy at Hastings – the providential sign proved to be true. As
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
declared, ‘the Frenchmen gained the field of battle, as God granted them for the sins of the nation.’ Thus began the Norman Conquest which would change the culture of England forever.

Changed Forever
William the Conqueror ensures no reversions
    I t is often assumed that once William of Normandy had won the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and killed King Harold the rest of the country was a pushover. In fact, it took him seven gruelling long years of battle before he gained complete control.
    After Hastings, William had no more than a foot in the door of England. There were too many other interested parties for the conquest to be straightforward. Besides, his army was limited in numbers to how many could be shipped across the Channel at any one time. He attacked London with only about 7000 men and had to rely on strategy and cunning. His terror tactics worked on the English people’s low morale, feeling as they did that the Normans were instruments of God’s vengeance.

    Nevertheless, as William would find out, there were many pockets of fierce Saxon resistance, determined not relinquish their land without a fight - the rebellion led by Hereward the Wake in East Anglia was particularly ferocious. And William had to contend with Danish incursions too. But the Conqueror was tough and cruel. He would think nothing of destroying whatever might stand in his way, if necessary slaughtering livestock, smashing crops, even burning whole Saxon villages.
The feudal system
    The only way William could hope to secure a lasting stranglehold on his new kingdom was to build castles everywhere, and so he did in virtually every main town of Britain. The largest strongholds were the Tower of London and Windsor Castle.
    Nothing of the like had been seen before in Anglo-Saxon England. Alfred the great had built fortified towns, the burghs, designed to protect the inhabitants from Danish raids. But the new Norman model of the motte and bailey – a wooden, pallisaded keep towering over a fortified compound – stood out mightily in the landscape, a constant reminder of the brute force of the new regime. Norman feudalism was born: a two-tier society now operated of Norman lords and Anglo-Saxon underlings.
Symbols of Norman power
    As a master, indeed an obsessive, of law and order, William ordered an exhaustive inventory to be drawn up itemising every building in the land. This became known as the Domesday Book (from the Latin
domus
, ‘home’). In so doing William could ensure that every burgh had a baron registered in charge who could be summoned to meetings at which new legislation could be delivered. Old Sarum, whose ruins can be seen above Salisbury Plain, was the site of his great court.
    William the Conqueror’s building programme was unparalleled in Europe. As well as castles, he built numerous cathedrals. Thus came to Britain the Norman style of church architecture, with its massive stone columns and wide naves, which in themselves stood out as awesome symbols of the permanence of the Conquest.
    At Winchester William ordered the construction of a much greater cathedral than the existing Old Minster to demonstrate how much more powerful was his earthly rule than that of his Saxon predecessors. And just to ram home the point, he had himself re-crowned every Easter in the Old Minster while the works were going on next door.
    William also had the area around Winchester cleared to create a royal hunting ground, known as the New Forest. Deer and boar became protected species in this and many other royal reserves created. Poaching was made a capital offence.
    As a measure of the